


Catgut

by StairwellWit



Category: Frankenstein - Benedict Cumberbatch, Frankenstein - Mary Shelley, Frankenstein - National Theatre Live Performance
Genre: 10/10 recommend if you can get ahold of it to see, Character Study, Drabble, Gen, I was moved to tears more than once, I went to see the NTL performance of Frankenstein, Jonny Lee Miller did equally lovely as Victor, and Benedict Cumberbatch did beautifully
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-23
Updated: 2018-11-23
Packaged: 2019-08-27 23:10:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 594
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16711813
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StairwellWit/pseuds/StairwellWit
Summary: He will never remember all the places his pieces have been.





	Catgut

**Author's Note:**

> This is my second posting on here! It's a little drabble I wrote up after watching the performance for the National Theatre Live's performance of Frankenstein. Directed by Danny Boyle. This is based on Benedict Cumberbatch's performance of the Creature. He and Jonny Lee Miller took turns playing the Creature and the Doctor every other night of the performance. I didn't get to see Miller's Creature though.  
> Anyway! Enjoy!

His body jerks of it's own accord.

His muscles: strings that had stiffened taught only to be plucked, picked back into the living choir by one Victor Frankenstein. A man playing an instrument he had not stopped to learn the song to. 

Composing chaotic lyrics not for him to own. 

Dr. Frankenstein: who sits ahead an orchestra filled with stone seats and empty graves. 

He is a maestro of the decomposed. Victor of nothing, nothing at all. 

Nothing, that is, but a heinous plagiarism of life. 

He has eaten the Apple whole in his greed; swallowed it and realized it was rotten too late. In turn for his indiscretion he is rotted too. 

The creature's jaw opens to laugh at the very thought. Sounds his throat cannot always provide him but the mirth is there nonetheless. Always there now, reserved entirely at the expense of his creator. 

When once he giggled at the cool kiss of the wind, the touch of snow against his skin. The creature was once very innocent, once very able to love the world for all he thought it was worth. 

But the world and Her people were not kind. So, kindness is in nothing he returns. A monster so they say, a monster they shall see. 

His joints snap instead of laughing finally; confused against the clutching of his throat, they search to comply as best they can. He appreciates their valor, they have always given him their best. 

Against his urging nonetheless they often knit their own choppy dance he does not ask to join but steps along to all the same. 

For many weeks he had hoped to shape them, teach them to listen like De Lacey's guitar. De Lacey's guitar had loved him, the chords perfect and forgiving to old knotty fingers. Giving and taking in equal measure to the master of their body. They were gentle with each other, complimenting and well tuned. The creature: he is too lean. He decides this some time after the fire, after the guitar and it's family have burned and he is once again alone with his body and it's dance. 

Too tough, he thinks. The guts Victor picked have yielded a string that sluices it's master against the fiddle he plays. 

Frankenstein does not play it well. 

He does not play it at all now. 

It is all the creature. A fiddle playing itself! Isn't it a sight to see.

This catgut creature. 

Creature of other men's organs held together with sutures and the hate he has been given. 

He leaks tallow of men he will not know. Raised of soil he can not free from nails that do not grow. The salt he sweats tastes of seas he will not sail. Yet his cheeks are rough with spume they have already known. 

He will never remember all the places his pieces have been. 

He will never know what it is his hands reach for when he is not looking. He is risen, Atlas unchained from the oppression of the world that buried him once. It will not again. 

This is what he knows. 

He is many men, pieced together. Their worst and their best quilted into a tapestry of hideousness he cannot hide. His skin, it may not be his. But he owns is his pain, his love. His brain may not even be his own, pulled from a jar of chemicals he smells caught in his nostrils at times, but his soul. 

Yes his soul, it is his, and his alone. 

This is what he knows. 


End file.
